...edit...
>eventually abandon it (quietly) and try something else.  Some
>people on this list, for example, have without fanfare stopped
>Neanderthin and taken up the Enig/Fallon _Nourishing Traditions_
>way of eating, for the simple reason that they found it worked as
>well as or better than Neanderthin for them.  For many (perhaps
>not all) "forbidden" foods there will seemingly be some people
>who feel better when they eat them.
>
>Todd Moody
>[log in to unmask]

Todd's reply has intrigued me quite a bit but first I want to introduce
myself.

I have been cutting out non-paleo foods on and off since January.  I am now
at an impasse and am looking for advice.  I am very skeptical of any
diet-health related information since I was totally bamboozled for my 10+
years as a vegetarian. As a vegetarian, I was asking 'Is there chicken stock
in this?' of everything but dessert.  I really believed the party line which
is that as long as you're getting enough calories, you're getting enough
protein.  I was living on breakfast cereal, yogurt, pasta & veggies, beans &
rice, bananas & Nutri-Grains.  After reading Ward Nicholson's interview on
the BeyondVeg site, I realized that I was 'failing-to-thrive'.  I was
sluggish and my brain was often foggy, my muscles would be quite sore for
days from some light weightlifting and my vision would get blurry at times.
I finally counted the grams of protein I was getting and was way under the
RDA.

So my New Year's resolution was to give up vegetarianism and never look
back.  It was hard since I was very concerned about killing animals.  My
thinking had always been that as long as I could be healthy as a vegetarian,
there was no good reason not to be.  My premise seemed to be falling apart
so I made the switch.  The paleo diet-health theory is very convincing to me
so I have tried hard to stick to the guidelines.  I have had some wonderful
benefits.  All the problems listed above disappeared plus no more heartburn
or insomnia.  Plus I don't have to eat every 2 hours which has improved my
quality of life enormously.

The problem is this: Each time that I stick to the guidelines for about 1-2
weeks I get this horrible growling hunger in my stomach.  It's not a
blood-sugar drop kind of hungry which I am very familiar with from my former
life - it's a gnawing and very distracting feeling.  Eating paleo foods
(with plenty of fat) doesn't help.  I need to concentrate at work so I end
up eating rice or ice cream or flour tortillas for a few meals and I can get
it to go away.  At least now I can get right back on the wagon again where
at the beginning it would set me off track for days.

So anyway, I'm wondering how we survived as a species eating basically meat
& veggies for so long.  I can't go 2 weeks.  It makes me think that I'm
missing something, but what?

I have read the Nourishing Traditions book as well as Price's Nutrition and
Physical Degeneration.  Both are very convincing - Price's pictures really
deliver the message.  Life would be a lot easier if I could make a sandwich
from sprouted grains or eat some oatmeal (soaked first) now and then.  Plus
it would fill me up better.  A friend at work is from Taiwan and she says in
her culture you don't feel full unless you've had rice.

I am very interested in finding out how people are faring under the
Nourishing Traditions guidelines.  Is there a list or bulletin board where
these people chat?  Have any of you tried both and have reasons for choosing
paleo?  I know that keeping the carb counts reasonably low helps a lot of my
problems and I would continue to do that no matter what.  I am interested in
feeling good now and preventing chronic disease later.

Thanks for your help.

Lisa